Halloween Haunts: Rekindling My Love for Halloween by Sheri White

Halloween Haunts: Rekindling My Love for Halloween by Sheri White     I have a confession to make. I don’t enjoy Halloween as much as I used to. The holiday has changed so much for me over the past several years. When my kids were little, Halloween was an event. The day started with a breakfast of pumpkin pancakes before they were off to school. I was always the “room mom” for my youngest daughter’s class, so it was up to me to plan the class party—the games, the prizes, the snacks, and sending out the dreaded volunteer sign-up sheet…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: THE GHOST OF YOUNGER ME, STILL LAUGHING BY MY SIDE by Ronald J. Murray

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: THE GHOST OF YOUNGER ME, STILL LAUGHING BY MY SIDE by Ronald J. Murray   My earliest taste of bringing others frightful fun came on Halloween during my twelfth year. Almost annually, Halloweens were spent at my grandmother’s when I was a kid. I could see downtown Pittsburgh from her front porch, so the trick-or-treater traffic was abundant. This particular year, I wore one of those faceless, hooded ghost costumes, and instead of trick-or-treating, I decided to hang back and have a different kind of fun. I reclined along the space next to the concrete stairs that led…

The Seers’ Table October 2023

Kate Maruyama, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Community Linda Addison recommends: London native C.C. Adams is the horror/dark fiction author behind books such as But Worse Will Come, Misery And Other Lines, and Downwind, Alice. A member of the HWA, he still lives in the capital. This is where he lifts weights, cooks—and looks for the perfect quote to set off the next dark delicacy. Adams has a story in The Black Beacon Book of Horror anthology releasing Friday, October 13, 2023 (yes, you read that right, Friday the 13th). The anthology features dark and disturbing tales of psychological,…

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: A KIWI KALEIDOSCOPE by Lee Murray (and friends)

HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: A KIWI KALEIDOSCOPE by Lee Murray (and friends) Recently, I asked the contributors of Kiwi horror anthology Remains to be Told: Dark Tales of Aotearoa (Clan Destine Press, 1 October 2023) what they thought about Halloween in New Zealand. Is it a thing? Yes, or no? What’s your take? My colleagues’ responses were both varied and insightful. Bryce Stevens, co-editor of the acclaimed Cthulhu Deep Down Under anthology series from IFWG, said no, “It’s not an important date” and Wellington poet Tim Jones agreed. “Not a huge fan,” he said. Although, in Tim’s case, location might be part…

Halloween Haunts: A Marie Kondo Halloween by JG Faherty

Halloween Haunts: A Marie Kondo Halloween by JG Faherty   Life is funny, and not always in the ha-ha way. We spend most of it moving forward into the future. Growing up. Getting jobs. A place of our own. Cars. The world advances, technology advances, life gets busier and more complicated every year. Things change over time, and not always for the better. This same transformation (some might say mutation!) has happened with our holidays. Traditions evolve or get lost completely. The simple things in life become commercialized and lose their meaning. Charles Schultz depicted this magnificently in “A Charlie…

Latinx Heritage in Horror: Interview with Ashley Dioses

Ashley Dioses is a writer of dark poetry and fiction from southern California.  She is the author of Diary of a Sorceress, a collection of dark fantasy and horror poetry, and The Withering, a collection of psychological horror and supernatural horror poetry.  Her third and latest collection, Darkest Days and Haunted Ways was just released from Jackanapes Press.  Her poetry has appeared in Weird Fiction Review, Cemetery Dance Publications, Weirdbook, Black Wings VI: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror, and others.  Her poem “Cobwebs,” was mentioned in Ellen Datlow’s recommended Best Horror of the Year Volume Twelve list. She has also appeared in the…

Halloween Haunts: Evans City Cemetery by Katherine Kerestman

Halloween Haunts: Evans City Cemetery by Katherine Kerestman   For this cat, The Night of the Living Dead is an essential component of the Halloween season, having its place of honor alongside the stories of Poe, Lovecraft, and Stoker; thus, it was a matter of destiny that on a chill and overcast October day I made my way to the Evans City Cemetery, which is every bit as atmospheric in real life as it is in the movie. The Evans City Cemetery is a macabre destination covered in my first book, Creepy Cat’s Macabre Travels: Prowling around Haunted Towers, Crumbling…

Latinx Heritage in Horror: Interview with Leticia Urieta

Leticia Urieta (she/her/hers) is a Tejana writer from Austin, TX. She is a teaching artist in the greater Austin community and the Program Director of Austin Bat Cave, a literary community serving students in the Austin area, as well as the co-director of Barrio Writers Austin and Pflugerville, a free creative writing program for youth. Leticia is also a freelance writer. She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College and holds an MFA in Fiction writing from Texas State University. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Chicon Street Poets, Lumina, The Offing, Kweli Journal, Medium, Electric Lit and others.…

Latinx Heritage in Horror: Interview with Pedro Iniguez

Pedro Iniguez is a Mexican-American horror and science-fiction writer from Los Angeles, California. He is a Rhysling Award finalist and has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Award for his speculative poetry. His fiction and poetry has appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Never Wake: An Anthology of Dream Horror, Shadows Over Main Street 3, A Night of Screams: Latino Horror Stories, Worlds of Possibility, Tiny Nightmares, Star*Line, Speculative Fiction for Dreamers, and Infinite Constellations, among others. He can be found online at www.pedroiniguezauthor.com What inspired you to start writing? Growing up sheltered and overprotected as…

Halloween Haunts: The Amazing True Story of the Witch Who Wouldn’t Go Home by Nicole Willson

Halloween Haunts: The Amazing True Story of the Witch Who Wouldn’t Go Home by Nicole Willson I was nine years old on the night the witch came to our house for Halloween and refused to leave. The Princess Leia costume Mom made me was a big hit in my neighborhood, and when I returned home from trick-or-treating, my orange plastic pumpkin overflowed with candy bars, M&Ms, Jolly Ranchers, and other tooth-rotting delights. I dumped my haul on the dining room table, breathed in the happy scent of cheap, waxy chocolate, and began sorting all my treats into brightly-colored piles. Figuring…

Latinx Heritage in Horror: Interview with Michael Paul Gonzalez

Michael Paul Gonzalez is the author of the novels BENEATH THE SALTON SEA, ANGEL FALLS, and MISS MASSACRE'S GUIDE TO MURDER AND VENGEANCE and creator of the serial horror audio drama podcast LARKSPUR UNDERGROUND.  An Active Member of the Horror Writers Association, his short stories have appeared in print and online, including the Chiral Mad 5, Qualia Nous vol. 2, Flame Tree Press Anthologies Endless Apocalypse and Gothic Fantasy: Chilling Horror Stories. He has also appeared in Tales from the Crust: A Pizza Horror Anthology, Where Nightmares Come From, Lost Signals, HeavyMetal.com, and Fantastic Tales of Terror. He resides in…

HWA Election Results 2023

HWA Election Results 2023 Los Angeles CA September 29, 2023 The Horror Writers Association (HWA) held its annual election in September. We had a number of amazing candidates for the four open positions of Trustee. Offices of Vice President and Treasurer ran unopposed. Our members have voted, and we are pleased to share the results. Please welcome our new Vice President, Lisa Wood, and our new Treasurer, Michael Knost. Congratulations to Lisa Kröger, Brian Matthews, and Angela Yuriko Smith on being re-elected as Trustees; and welcome to new Trustee, Brian Keene. The elected officers shall hold their respective offices for…

Latinx Heritage in Horror: Interview with Fernanda Castro

Fernanda Castro is a Brazilian writer from Recife, also a freelance translator and copyeditor. Her work has appeared before in Strange Horizons and The Dark Magazine. You can find her on social media as @fernandaversa. What inspired you to start writing? I read a lot as a child, especially fantasy, under the influence of my older sister. Being always immersed in stories, writing was a natural development for me. I made fanfics where my school friends and I lived adventures in fictional worlds (Legolas, sorry to break your heart, sweetie, but I've grown up). However, the idea of writing professionally…

VETERANS IN HORROR SPOTLIGHT: THIS NOVEMBER

The time has come again. The HWA is going to be running the month-long Veterans in Horror Spotlight this November, coordinated by David Rose and Chance Fortune. We’re talking books this year. If you are an HWA member and a military veteran (defined as a former service member of any uniformed, national military), we invite you to join us. Please send us an email message to veterans@horror.org by October 20, 2023. In this message, please include: Your name Headshot (we didn’t keep the ones from last year) Bio (under 100 words) A write-up (under 250 words) on a horror book…

Latinx Heritage in Horror: Interview with Carlos E. Rivera

Carlos E. Rivera is a Costa Rican queer writer and former English teacher. His debut novel The Local Truth: White Harbor Book 1, peaked at #4 in Amazon's new releases in horror by LGBTQ+ authors. As an anxious, introverted kid growing up in Costa Rica during the 80s and 90s, he always felt like something of an outsider. His refuge was escaping into and devouring sci-fi, fantasy, drama, crime thrillers, and above all things, HORROR. For years, these books, movies, comics, and even video games became his life. He plunged into the horror-next-door of Stephen King, the ineffable cosmic abominations…

Latinx Heritage in Horror: Interview with Lisa M. Bradley

  Originally from South Texas, Lisa M. Bradley now lives in Iowa, the traditional homeland of the Iowa, Meskwaki, and Sauk Nations, among others. Her work has been featured on the LeVar Burton Reads podcast and in venues such as Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Uncanny, and The Moment of Change: An Anthology of Feminist Speculative Poetry. She has poetry forthcoming in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her short fiction and poetry collection is The Haunted Girl (Aqueduct Press). Her debut novel is Exile (Rosarium Publishing). Learn more at her website or follow her on Bluesky @cafenowhere.bsky.social. What inspired…

Latinx Heritage in Horror: Interview with John C. Mannone

John C. Mannone has poems in Windhover, North Dakota Quarterly, Poetry South, Baltimore Review, and others. He won the SFPA Dwarf Stars Award (2020), was awarded an HWA Scholarship (2017) and a Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in Appalachian literature, and served as celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018). His full-length collections are Disabled Monsters (Linnet’s Wings Press, 2015), Flux Lines (Linnet’s Wings Press, 2022), Sacred Flute (Iris Press, 2023), and Song of the Mountains (Middle Creek Publishing, 2023). He edits poetry for Abyss & Apex and other journals. He’s a college professor of physics &…

Latinx Heritage in Horror: Interview with Luisa Colón

Born and raised in New York City, Luisa began her career as a journalist in the late 90s; her work has appeared in numerous print and online publications such as New York, Latina, USA Today, The New York Times, and many more. Her other creative work includes illustration and two murals currently displayed at the World Trade Center. Inspired by her fascination with the cinema, Luisa also made a brief but successful foray into acting, starring in the award-winning 2006 indie film Day Night Day Night as well as the titular role in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2007 short film Anna.…

Latinx Heritage in Horror: Interview with Javier Loustaunau

  Javier Loustaunau (1979, Los Mochis, Mexico) is an author and game designer whose work has been featured in several anthologies and programs, most notably The Nosleep Podcast which is the #1 ranked horror podcast.  What inspired you to start writing? I grew up in a house surrounded by books so there was never a moment where I did not think I was going to write, it felt like everyone must write for there to be this many books. Really, I was just impatient to grow up a little and become a better writer, somebody who did not have to…

Latinx Heritage in Horror: Richard Z. Santos

Richard Z. Santos' debut novel, Trust Me, was a finalist for the Writer's League of Texas Book Awards and was named one of the best debuts of the year by CrimeReads. He's the editor of the collection A Night of Screams: Latino Horror Stories. He is the Executive Director of Austin Bat Cave, an organization that provides creative writing workshops to students in under-resourced areas. He is a former Board Member of The National Book Critics Circle and has judged contests for The Kirkus Prize, The NEA, and many more. Recent work can be found in Austin Noir (Akashic Books),…